Jack Welch: I was right about jobs report

Jack Welch is sticking to his story, saying the latest jobs report is suspicious.

Jack Welch elaborated Wednesday on his widely-debunked criticism of the latest government jobs report, claiming in an op-ed that the reported 7.8% unemployment rate is "downright implausible."

Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Welch said that it is an overstatement to suggest that data collected by the Bureau of Labor Statistics is "precise" or "bias-free." And he raised questions over three key statistics -- the labor-force participation rate, the growth in government workers and overall job growth -- saying big one-month gains "have to raise some eyebrows."

On Friday, Welch suggested on Twitter that the Obama administration, calling them "these Chicago guys," had manipulated the monthly jobs report for September in order to make the economy look better than it actually is just weeks before the election. A firestorm quickly erupted on Twitter, and Welch's comments became a major political talking point.

The unemployment rate fell to 7.8% in September, down from 8.1% a month earlier. The drop was due to a BLS survey of households that showed 873,000 more people had jobs than in the previous month. That was the biggest one-month gain in more than nine years.

In his WSJ op-ed, Welch suggests that the reaction to his criticism of "the ruling authorities" was something he would expect in Soviet Russia or Communist China. "Nope," he wrote, "that would be the United States right now, when a person (like me, for instance) suggests that a certain government datum (like the September unemployment rate of 7.8%) doesn't make sense."

Welch also elaborates on why he thinks the unemployment figure is suspicious, but again fails to provide evidence of malfeasance. Instead, he suggests that the data collection methods employed by BLS are easily manipulated.

"To suggest that the input to the BLS data-collection system is precise and bias-free is—well, let's just say, overstated," Welch said.

Welch explained that some survey questions leave room for interpretation and that bias on the part of data collectors could lead to skewed results. But he provided no evidence that such manipulation took place, or that the Obama administration was involved in any way.